Our Hindi films are taking to the food metaphor with some frequency these days. After luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana and The lunchbox there is Daawat-e-Ishq, presenting love in a fusion twist
In these tactile times, when even abstract emotions need to be conveyed through graphic symbols and a new vocabulary, food has become a metaphor for the rich flavours that make up life itself. In fact, this has led to the birth of the “food porn,” a glamourised, spectacular, visual presentation of cooking in all forms of visual media and its glorification as our substitute for our deepest desires, passions and emotions. Food is as complex, varied, tossed up, blended and churned as the ups and downs of life and as settled, simple and uplifting as enlightenment. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why modern filmmakers around the globe are increasingly using food as the leitmotif of stories.
Hollywood has successfully captured the food metaphor, the camera literally panning the salivating sizzle of the meat, the killing-me-soft knives gliding over the cold cuts, the luscious vigour of the greens, the smoky hotness of spices, the slathering freshness of the butter and the overflowing smoothness of molten cheese. Each has been a transit of the emotional graph of the characters preparing them. In Chocolat, the subtle, reclusive and elegant Juliet Binoche, a single mother, opens a chocolaterie in a rigid town of faith and melts its heart instead, bringing out the innate goodness of its people and letting it ooze out from the stiffness of custom. Julie & Julia shows women luxuriating in the perfection of their passion pursuit, thereby finding an identity for themselves. Both Julia Child, who simplified the art of French cooking for everyday homes, and food blogger Julie Powell, who set a target to complete cooking all of Child’s recipes in a given number of days, are more than just Epicurean. They got the most difficult thing (in this case the prized expertise of refined French cooking) done, the one certainty in their uncertain, odd and non-descript lives, the one comfort zone they could call their own. The fullness of a Ratatouille is always remembered on a rainy day, where individual talent can tame the ego, where anybody can be an artist if the art is pure and soul-transforming. Food is also the core of bonding in Chef, where Carl Casper quits his uber job and sets off on the road to self-discovery in his food truck, cooking up a storm with his social media-savvy son. In the end, they cannot do without each other.
Our Hindi films are taking to the food metaphor with some frequency these days. Of course, there has been the classic Bawarchi, who helped us balance the ingredients of love and relationships. Then recently there was luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana, where the drifter hero finds the secret of a family recipe in a digestive churan, the metaphor for a curable solution being born of your own self-knowledge and personal history. The lunchbox was all about home-cooked, heart-warming comfort, the whiff of which touched a stranger, whose appreciation led the reconciled, pliant housewife to chase happiness on her terms.
The forthcoming Daawat-E-Ishq is about two people from two different cooking traditions, lucknowi and Hyderabadi, finding the heady aroma of love in a fusion twist. And finally there is the cross-cultural combat of The Hundred-Foot Journey, where Om Puri as the displaced Indian takes on a Michelin-starred restaurant on the same French street run by Helen Mirren, the fiery hotness of one pitted against the fluidity and measured finesse of the other, both eventually balancing each other out, influencing each other’s accent and ending the 100 ft gap between them, the apogee of fusion.
Food indeed is the most apt symbol of our times — attractive, absorbing, inclusive, exclusive, stand-alone, blended, singular, plural, rooted, free-flowing....in short the sum of all contradictions. Much like us. It is the richest sensory experience going around. A lot like love. We need to make it our unifying talking point in our hand-held world.